The recipe sounded yummy, but I wanted to make it a little healthier, so I added whole wheat flour instead of reg. flour; I used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter instead of reg. butter or margerine and I halved the sugar and added Splenda for the other half. I realize that I should have used whole wheat pastry flour (but I can't find any!), but I thought that if I sifted the whole wheat 3 times, that might do the trick.

The end result is that the muffins weren't bad, but they weren't great either. They are a little too dry and definitely not sweet enough - and I can just barely taste the pineapple. I can't taste the cream of coconut flavor at all. So, I thought that I would make up for the lack of sweetness by adding a glaze. I was tired by then, so I didn't try to "pretty up" the glaze. It only helped the sweetness a little...

Suggestions as to what I could have done differently to make it healthier?? Here is my finished product:

Update: Okay. So, I gave it another go, using the correct ingredients: white flour, sugar & real butter... Of course, the taste is much improved. I can now taste the pineapple & Creme of Coconut flavors. I did add a little coconut extract, and it could have been a touch sweeter - so next time, I will add a little more sugar (recipe called for 1/4 cup). I didn't need a glaze for these. Here is a pic.

ETA: I finally found whole wheat pastry flour (It's like trying to find "hen's teeth"!! I found it at Whole Foods. I chickened out with this recipe - but I plan on giving it a try with another baked goods recipe. I haven't decided what yet.

Barb, thank you for the info. I do plan to try the Lor-Ann extracts. They have a gazillion of them! I plan to try a few - especially the pineapple because that's another one I can't find anywhere.

Never bake with margarine, it has too much water in it. The dryness is probably because you cut the fat out with the margarine. IMO it's better to use the normal fat for baking and just eat a bit less of the finished product. I alway use butter but I did get some coconut oil to play around with and it works well too, too bad it's too expensive to be practical. Amazon had coconut blossum sugar on sale recently and I got 6 pounds of that, made some raspberry/plout bread last night using the coconut oil and sugar. Lots of coconut flavor. I'll be sad when they're gone :( You can also add about 1/4 cup of low or non fat yogurt or sour cream to most cake type recipes to add some moisture without hurting them. No substitutions, just add it.

Splenda doesn't hold up well to heat, it loses it's sweetening power. Truvia works really well in baking but it is a little more expensive. The new stevia mixes they're coming out with in the future should be even better.

For the pineapple flavor I'd need to see the recipe. ATK uses reductions a lot to boost flavor, if the recipe calls for canned pineapple you can take the juice and simmer it until it's a thick syrup and add that for flavor, watching your liquid level. If there's something like milk in the recipe reduce it by the amount of syrup you add. I like to match the flavor extracts I use to the recipe, I sometimes use them with the vanilla and sometimes instead of. It's worth it to buy the good ones., Lor-Ann makes a huge variety of extracts and emulsions. Unfortunately the emulsions don't come in a wide variety but once you use one you'll wish they did - all the flavor but none of the harshness of extracts. The almond is to die for.

Sugar also boosts the other flavors so if they came out not sweet enough they're gonna lack in the other flavors too.